


Cut So Far

by darkrose



Series: Walking on Broken Glass [4]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Character of Color, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Magic, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:17:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrose/pseuds/darkrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a lazy morning in Kirkwall, Fenris traces the map of Hawke's life, written on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cut So Far

**Author's Note:**

> For Kink Bingo 2011 (Amnesty), prompt "Scars/Scarification".

_There's a dream that strings the road with broken glass for us to hold_  
And I cut so far before I had to say:  
Please please tell me now is there something I should know?  
Is there something I should say that'll make you come my way?  
Do you feel the same, 'cause you don't let it show 

"Is There Something I Should Know", Duran Duran

~ o ~

Julian Hawke was unlike any mage I had ever met.

No Imperial magister would show his emotions as openly as Julian did, his brown eyes deep wells of hurt after I'd left his bed that first night. I couldn't conceive of Hadriana or Danarius on their knees in the dirt, pulling up weeds in their dead mother's garden or sitting on the floor by the fire mending their own robes. Magisters didn't have callused hands and lean muscle from actual physical labor; that's what slaves were for. Certainly I had yet to encounter the magister who would sleep like this, sprawled out on his stomach, snoring loudly, trusting only to a lover's affection to keep him alive.

Julian shifted slightly when I reached out and stroked his hair. He did occasionally display a familiar vanity, brushing his long, dark hair with the solemnity of a religious ritual every night, carefully trimming his beard in the morning, and spending what seemed like hours staring into that mirror in the Black Emporium, poking at his nose as if he could make it smaller. 

Yet even when it came to his appearance, Julian wasn't much like a magister. The smooth expanse of his mahogany skin was marked with scars, the kind that any magister worth the name would have removed with magic. I sat up, tracing the line of the one around his ankle, that looked like something had bitten deep. His leg twitched, and I narrowly avoided being kicked in the face.

"Tickles," Julian grumbled, voice rough with sleep.

"What happened here?" I asked. He lifted his head and squinted in my general direction.

"You're asking this now? If you must know, I got caught in a trap. Long time ago; back in Lothering." His smile was almost fond.

"I thought you said your father was a healer." 

"He was." Julian sat up. "It was the peaches. The fruit, that is, not the girl." At my puzzled expression, he waved a hand. "Never mind. Old Man Barlin grew peaches. They were wonderful; sweet and juicy...but he sold them for more money than Mother was willing to spend on food, especially when we had a perfectly good apple tree. So Carver and I would sneak over to his orchard and, ah, appropriate a few."

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as I tried to imagine Julian and Carver as a pair of dark-haired scamps joining forces to make mischief. "I think I see what happened..."

Julian sighed. "Yeah. He'd had problems with wolves, so he'd set out traps. I jumped up to grab a peach and landed right in one. Carver was able to pry it apart, but we didn't want to tell Father, not after he'd already warned us once. So I tried to heal it myself." I winced. I was the only one among our companions who didn't mind Julian's healing, because I expected magical healing to hurt. Everyone else used potions or waited for the abomination to mend their wounds, and I couldn't really blame them.

"After a couple of days, it started to, um...fester. Father noticed and was able to purge the infection and heal it properly, but it left a scar. And we both had to help Barlin with the chores for the next month."

"Was it worth it?"

"Absolutely." Julian's face was solemn, except for his eyes. "Those were the best sodding peaches I ever had."

I let my hand trail up his leg to a rough patch of skin that curved around his thigh from hip to knee. The scars were tiny points that looked as though a handful of needles hand been driven into his skin.

"The rock wraith," he told me. "I didn't get behind the pillar fast enough the first time."

I shuddered. I remembered little of that battle other than striking hard and fast when the thing was vulnerable, and hiding in the shadow of a stone pillar when it unleashed its devastating attack. It had been Julian who realized the pattern, and who corralled us to safety before the first assault. "You never said anything."

Julian shrugged. "Didn't think there was any point. I could walk, and I figured Anders should save his mana since there were still darkspawn about. I had him take a look at it after we got back, but there wasn't much he could do after so long."

Further up on his left side, there was a mark that looked like it came from a sword. I touched it with a fingertip, and Julian shivered. "And this one?"

"Carver." He chuckled, but I didn't see anything funny. Julian's relationship with his brother baffled me, and always had. Julian was invariably polite and mild-mannered--at least, until the fighting began--with everyone other than Carver. There was an edge to their bantering that I never heard in his voice with anyone else, even Sebastian, who I knew irritated him. And yet...Carver had kept Julian's secret as long as he could. No matter how much they bickered, he was quick to leap to his brother's defense, even though Julian didn't always reciprocate. 

"I've told you about how Father insisted I learn to use my staff as a weapon in its own right...Carver and I used to spar with each other for practice. He usually beat me quite thoroughly." 

"This looks like he struck from behind," I pointed out. 

"Mmm...yes. He did." Julian was silent for a long moment before adding, "It was really my fault, though. I thought he was holding back because I was the fragile mage. I kept needling him, and finally I turned my back on him."

"And he hit you?"

"Well, after I grazed his arse with a lightning bolt. When Father heard that part, he told me that he'd still heal it, but it would leave a scar, which would be a good reminder not to use my magic as a weapon without provocation."

Blood mage or not, Malcolm Hawke had taught his children well, and I was grateful for that. 

Julian rolled over onto his back and looked at me, one eyebrow arched. Despite having been fast asleep only moments before, certain parts of his anatomy seemed remarkably alert. Just then, I was more interested in the ugly puckered mark high on the left side of his chest. He winced a little when I touched it.

"What happened here?"

The silence stretched on even longer than it had earlier. Finally Julian said, "An arrow. Poisoned."

I waited, and eventually he sighed. "There was a trader down from Denerim with some cloth and dyes and such. It was the first time our parents let us go alone--Bethany, Carver and me--and we'd started back. Lothering's always had trouble with thugs and highwaymen, even before the Blight, and Bethy decided we were being too slow and ran ahead, right into a group of bandits."

Julian closed his eyes. "Carver had his sword, but he still wasn't that good with it, and I had my staff, but it didn't have a blade and to be honest, I wasn't that good either. One of the stupid shits grabbed Bethy after I'd warned them…I yelled for Bethy to duck and then…"

"You killed them." 

"The bandit let Bethy go real quick after I flung a lightning bolt at him, but I didn't care. He'd tried to hurt _my sister_...They started screaming when they realized they weren't facing an unarmed kid, but an apostate mage. I threw lightning and fire and everything I had. One of them got an arrow off just before I burned him to death. Bethy was so upset…she and Carver tried to get the arrow out but only managed to break off the shaft…Carver had to carry me half the way home. I don't even remember actually getting there."

Julian opened his eyes, staring off into nowhere with an expression too much like the one he'd worn for weeks after Leandra's murder. "I didn't know it then, but Father was starting to get sick, and using his magic was a strain. He managed to heal me, even though it took a lot out of him…and he sat there and held me as I vomited from the poison and the smell of burning flesh that I couldn't get out of my nose."

Before meeting Julian, I would have laughed at the notion of a mage having any regrets about using his power to kill. I'd seen him take down dozens of darkspawn without blinking, laugh as he sent demons back to the Fade, and gleefully blast spiders into ash. I'd also watched him kill any number of Carta thugs, blood mages, Qunari and slavers. Even when he'd rained destruction on the man who killed his mother, I knew he'd seen it as a necessity and not something to be savored. The only time he'd appeared to revel in raining down lethal destruction on an enemy had been when we fought Danarius. 

That may have had something to do with why I loved him.

I almost wished I could have said the words, but as always, they stuck in my throat. Instead I bent down and kissed him deeply, burying one hand in his hair and pressing against the scar from the arrow until he moaned into my mouth. I pulled away, only so I could lick a path from just beneath his bottom lip down along his throat and the center of his broad chest until the tip of my tongue touched the raised mark that ran from breastbone to belly.

"And you know where that one came from." he said, his voice quiet.

I did. It was etched into my fractured memory as much as the lyrium was etched into my skin: hearing the rumbling from the Arishok's men as he declared a _bas saarebas_ to be _basalit-an_ …seeing the flare of life in Julian's eyes, the first I'd seen since his mother's death, as he answered the Arishok's challenge with a smirk and said "Let's dance"…watching as he led the Arishok on a chase around the Viscount's throne room, downing lyrium potions as he flung walls of stone and ice at his opponent...my heart stopping when the Arishok cornered him and drove his massive sword into Julian's chest, almost pinning him to the wall...staring in amazement as Julian shoved him back with a blast of pure force, guzzling healing potions until he had enough strength for a final magical barrage…catching him when he collapsed the instant Meredith swept out of the room because he would _not_ let her see him falter, even if he was holding his internal organs in place with one hand…

I kissed the line of that scar, the visible, permanent reminder of what he'd done for the sake of a friend who lied to him, and for this wretched cesspool of a city. He went still, and I was afraid I'd done something wrong until he reached up and carded his fingers through my hair.

"Just curious--and I'm certainly not complaining--but why the sudden interest in my many manly scars?"

_Because knowing you have them makes me less self-conscious about my own marking. Because they prove that you're nothing like Danarius. Because they tell me the stories you never talk about and allow me to say things I can't put into words._

_Because they're part of you, and I love you._

"No reason, really." I moved lower and thrust my tongue into his navel, making him squirm and successfully preventing him from asking more uncomfortable questions for a good while.

**Author's Note:**

> **Qunari translations:**
> 
>  
> 
>  _Arishok:_ Member of the Qunari Triumverate, leader of the military.
> 
>  _bas:_ One not of the Qun, a foreigner; literally, "thing".
> 
>  _saarebas:_ A mage; literally, "dangerous thing". A _bas saarebas_ is a non-Qunari mage.
> 
>  _basalit-an:_ A non-Qunari worthy of respect.


End file.
